Despite retraining as a forward air controller for an opportunity to get into the fight, Prince Henry of Wales is being denied the chance to emulate his eponymous forebear and remain in the company of his band of brothers. Crowns for convoy have been placed in his purse, and he is being whisked back to England, where gentlemen now abed hold their manhoods cheap and fear for his safety because some asshat in the media couldn't keep his damned mouth shut.

1) I don't receive the latest crypto decoder sheets in the mail from your particular political faction. I might get so bored trying to decode your message in order to figure out who the heck you're talking about that I give up and go read something else.

On this date in 1993, the BATF raided the facilities of a fringe religious group outside of Waco, Texas on the suspicion that some of the 150 firearms on the premises might fire more than one round with a single action of the trigger without having first paid the appropriate $200/gun federal tax.

(As a PS: Only 150 guns and 8,000 rounds of ammo? I thought those folks were supposed to have an arsenal or something.)

He wasn't necessarily my cup of political tea but I'll probably miss him more than Mr. Beck, mainly because he was good at making chowderheads feel the pain of their ignorance, plus the very mention of his name could cause a hippie's head to explode if dropped into the conversation at just the right moment. Good entertainment that doesn't insult my intelligence is going to be harder to come by from now on.

(Of course, in the latest New Zealand printings of the tale, the dwarves and elves and hobbits will all dine on muesli and bottled water rather than wine and roast mutton, and the tavern where they meet Bard the Bowman will only serve non-alcoholic lite beer, according to an alert provided by Hazel Stone.)

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign got underway before most of the other ones; eight years ago, as a matter of fact. Only the most hopeless naifs saw her carpetbagging senatorial campaign as anything other than a prelude to a run for the big brass ring. She spent her time in the Senate trying to establish her bona fides as someone distinct from Mrs. Bill Clinton, the First Lady that had been viewed by much of America as an evil-tempered harpy, and putting together an image of thoughtful statesmanship designed to carry her into the Oval Office.

As the current campaign got underway, it seemed that her work had paid off. The word "inevitable" was bandied about, and early primaries seemed to support that conclusion. But the wheels on the wagon started to wobble...

No sooner had Obama's campaign turned things into a horse race, than the carefully cultivated image of the Kinder, Gentler Hillary began to slip. The Illinois senator had stumbled across the perfect weapon against Hillary's inevitability: Nothing. Faced with punching air, Hillary began flailing wildly. With no positions to attack, she was left no choice but to go after Obama himself, and Mr. & Mrs. Middle America are reminded of the termagant they spent the eight years of the Clinton administration loving to hate.

In a matter of months we have gone from a Hillary campaign that was a juggernaut of inevitability to a Hillary that looks like a Limbaugh parody of First Lady Clinton, lashing out in snide personal attacks and quibbling over the definitions of "denounce" and "reject". Left hitting smoke, Clinton looks less the polished senator and more the character of a Barbara Olson nightmare, complete with staff shakeups and circular firing squads of insider finger-pointing. Make fun of Barack's empty rhetoric of Change and Hope all you want, but it was the perfect iceberg to put in the path of the unsinkable Clinton.

EDITED TO ADD: Incidentally, McCain is plagued by almost identical personality handicaps, but was saved from them by the fact that A) He started at the back of the pack, B) His opponents folded quickly, and C) The "Will The Real Conservative Please Stand Up" theme of the GOP debates provided him something to talk about other than what a bunch of poopie-heads he thought his opponents were.

On this date in 1933, the Reichstag in Berlin burned to the waterline under circumstances that you didn't have to be Mulder & Scully to find fishy. This provided tinfoil hatters and internet flame war participants with a handy metaphor for generations to come.

So, say you wanted to see some sharks. You'd hop in your car and drive to the nearest aquarium, right? Okay, but suppose you wanted a more thrilling experience? Well, you could maybe hook up with some folks who had a shark cage or one of those funky mesh shark suits. Or you could answer an ad that read like this:

Let me get this straight: They toss a bunch of fish heads and guts into the water to assure the presence of riled-up hammerheads and tiger sharks while you, the idiot paying guest, are in the water with them, protected by naught but your swimsuit? I am a little offended that the Coast Guard actually responded to this call; after all, those were my tax dollars in the cutter's gas tank. "Uh, roger Shear Water. We read you. You say you have one wounded aboard who was bitten by a shark while doing what, again?"

On this date in 1993, a van full of explosives detonated in the parking garage under the World Trade Center. It killed six, and over one thousand were injured, most during the subsequent evacuation. The blast blew a four-story deep crater in the underground parking garage, as well as igniting a firestorm of finger-pointing, posturing, and legislation-proposing as far away as Washington, DC. In the end, some Arabs were jailed, some bills were passed and others were shot down, some Americans were inconvenienced, and we all lived happily ever after. Well, at least for eight more years...

On this date in 1836, 26 year-old Connecticut native Samuel Colt was awarded a patent for his "revolving gun". Supposedly inspired by the wheel of a ship on which he'd been sailing, Colt's percussion revolver was the first really practical repeating handgun.

Mark Alger would like to remind you that when Hills goes after the money of those eeeevil big corporations, those eeeevil big corporations are going to need to get it from someplace. See, they can't just print their own money on flimsy IOU's, like a certain other large organization can.

Still looking for the camera with the pictures required for Sunday Smithery to occur.

UPDATE: Found it! God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. They weren't kidding when they said this 'moving' thing was stressful. I had never moved on this scale before: When I moved in with my Ex in Atlanta back in 1/93, everything I owned fit into a two-door Ford Granada. When I moved to K-town in 11/00, it took one trip each with an '84 Trans Am, a rented Impala, and my Ex's Dakota. This is the first time I'd ever had to move this much stuff (and I blew the furniture in place, saving only a few folding tables and desks). I hope RobertaX doesn't mind me never, ever moving again, because I ain't doing it.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

My apologies for the vast expanse of nothing on my blog today. I will be spending the day huffing Butch's Gun Oil fumes and wiping everything in the museum down. They'd gotten a lick and a promise during unloading, but they need a good slathering for storage. You don't realize how much stuff there is until you have to oil it...

Friday, February 22, 2008

There are two stop signs visible from the front porch of the new Batcave. In the last 48 hours I have discovered that all that bologna you Yankees have been feeding me about your 1337 snow-driving skillz is just propaganda.

Scuttlebutt about the intarw3b is that some people in The Place Where Great Britain Used To Be are floating the idea of a ~$20/year licence for the priviledge of smoking. No word on what other forms of self-indulgence are being considered for the same licensing scheme, but I can imagine some pretty dreadful uses for the UK's newfound love of CCTV cameras.

Of course, fair is fair; if we couldn't stop PKK guerillas from shooting up southern Turkey and then slinking back across the Iraqi border, we couldn't very well expect the Turks to just stand and take it on the chin and then let the perpetrators tag up safe at home base. Unfortunately this is taking place in the Kurdish part of Iraq, which was the unsuckiest part of the country.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

If you read this at work, you'll be pleased to know that the dining room ceiling is the same distance from the floor as it was this morning. No book-related seismic activity has occurred.

-T.)

UPDATE: ...and with the return of the truck to U-Haul, the _Burning Money_ light (as Matt so eloquently phrased it) has gone out and my blood pressure can begin its slow spiral back down to normal. Despite my fears, the truck we rented was new-ish, clean, and un-busted. Plus, they let me slide on a day's worth of overage fees because of the weather and the fact that I looked very Southern and bewildered in the snow. Mad props to U-Haul in both Lenoir City, TN, and Indy, as well as All The Right Moves movers for helping keep the unavoidable suckage of moving to an absolute minimum. Thanks, y'all! :)

On this date in 1848, Marx (the un-funny one*) and Engels published the Communist Manifesto. IQ's of college PoliSci departments began a decline that has not reversed to this day**.

* Imagine how much better the world would be if it was the ideals of Harpo Marx, rather than boring ol' Karl, that caught on. It's hard to massacre people with bicycle horns.

** The nadir was almost reached at the start of the 2007-08 academic year, when UC Berkely considered offering a faculty gig to a head of cabbage. They'd have done it, too, if protesting vegans hadn't pointed out that being required to teach undergrads was unfair oppression of a vegetable.

...was brought to mind last night while watching the lunar eclipse. Every time I see one, I'm reminded of P.J. O'Rourke's line about shamans back in the old days; something along the lines of "Oh no, look! Sky Dragon is eating Moon Woman! Give me silver and I will make him spit her back out again."

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A rear-wheel drive roadster with fat summer high-performance tires and Tennessee plates apparently says "Stay back a hundred feet, Edna, god only knows what that hillbilly's going to try to do next!" loud and clear in Hoosierese.

(For what it's worth, the traction control light only lit up twice and I only felt the antilock kick in once. Although that last was at the shopping center exit with a really busy street ahead, which made for an exciting half second or so...)

Arianna, honey, McCain is only "Right Wing" when compared with, say, Dennis Kucinich. Compared to even milquetoast RINOs like Mitt Romney, the man looks like a slightly more liberal version of Tip O'Neal.

Secondly, if you could stop your Progressive Sack Dance over the crumpled remains of 'limited government' for a moment, I'd like to point out that the two candidates jousting for the Oval Office are supposed to offer alternatives for the voting public to choose between. The election isn't supposed to be Arianna Nirvana where bi-coastal big city libs like you can close your eyes and pull the lever, any ol' lever, comfortable in the knowledge that you're going to get a Center-Left Democrat or a Center-Left Republican. It isn't supposed to be, but this time it looks like it will.

The back is feeling better; only a little stiff and sore as opposed to immobile like it was yesterday. I'm still moving gingerly and doing a lot more bending at the knees than the waist, however. I still need to be productive while waiting for the Brunt Brothers to show up and offload the truck, though, so...

I got the Tower of Power that is VFTP Command Central all cleaned off and up'n'running. I figured I'd get all proactive and set up the wireless router while I was at it. Only I've been using Cable-propelled intarw3bz these last few years and the new crib is all DSL. I'm hesitant, and that makes me want to wait 'till RobertaX gets home in case some help desk drone at the Service Provider needs to speak with someone named "RobertaX" when/if the connection gets hosed.

The irony part? My big thick three ring binder of helpful destructions from my brief stint as a DSL call center help desk drone is sitting in a trash can two states away, where I tossed it on Friday after thinking "Well, I won't be needing this ever again..."

"Thank you for calling BellSouth Fast Access DSL! My name is Tamara and I won't be helping you today since I binned my instructions because I am a moron!"

So I'm standing in line at the local Pharm-O-Rama waiting to pay for my purchases when I notice the latest issue of Cosmo. There on the cover are bold letters announcing an article inside on the topic of, and I quote, "Your Va-Jay-Jay". The infantilization of America proceeds apace, I see. I couldn't find a current issue of Men's Health to see if it had an accompanying article on "Mister Winky".

No wonder the Russkies managed to slip so much stuff past us during the dark days of the Cold War. We were groping in the dark, intelligence-wise, by the Carter Era. How was America supposed to discover secret Russian satellite launches when we couldn't even figure out that the Village People were gay?

There were lots more itsy bitsy snowflings on the ground this morning. I got to sweep the front walk and the back walk. Hooray. I could make a snowman if I didn't have to finish unloading the truck, and if my back wasn't still sore, and if I didn't mind a snowman that was all of maybe a foot tall...

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

I have never before had any kind of trouble from my back. I hope I never do again. Sitting down or laying down is a gingerly-executed, several minute procedure. Objects on the floor and up to about knee level might as well be on the moon for all my chances of grabbing them.

Thankfully there was a menu from a sandwich delivery joint hanging at eye level on the fridge. Face now fed, I'm going to try to put a hot pad back under my kidneys and whimper for a bit.

"Not long ago I moved from New York City to a small town in New Hampshire. I didn't know much about country life, but I was in love with New England scenery. I wanted to do my writing in an atmosphere of pastoral serenity. And I felt a need for a healthier life. Also, I'd never had a roof repaired so I thought New York was the most expensive place on earth to live." -P.J. O'Rourke, "Moving To New Hampshire"

There were itsy bitsy snowflings on the ground this morning! I got to sweep the front walk! Hooray! I could make a snowman if I didn't have to finish unloading the truck, and if I didn't mind a snowman that was all of maybe 6 inches tall...

Monday, February 18, 2008

First, mad props to Gunsmith Bob, Dr. Strangegun, pward, RobertaX, and Les Jones, without whom all my stuff would still be in my old crib.

Additional repeat mad props to RobertaX, without whose mad 1337 skillz I'd still be sitting in the passenger seat of a big ol' U-Haul in Knoxville, staring out the windshield and wondering why it wasn't moving.

We hit Indy at 0mygawd30 Monday AM, thanks to a late start and vile-tempered weather gods. That, and the fact that a 17 foot truck burdened with a few tons of books and BMW gets passed on uphill grades by Yugos running on three cylinders, overweight children on Big Wheels, and Stephen Hawking.

Got the expensive and/or weather-sensitive stuff off-loaded, and it looks like my tomorrow will be spent schlepping a hojillion tons of books. With any luck VFTP Command Central and its associated wireless router will be up and running by tomorrow afternoon, but I'm bracing myself for disappointment.

The only downside of the trip so far is that Rannie the Borderline Psychotic Calico seems to be not so borderline anymore. Among the things I seem to have forgotten to pack is her sanity. Right now she's yowling at Mittens, hissing and spitting at me when I walk past, and trying to pick a fight with the couch she's hiding under. If any of y'all back in Tennessee find her marbles, get in touch with me and I'll give you an address to which they can be FedExed.

Re: The Sunday Smith. I thoughtfully took pictures of the remaining Smiths on the Official Railing, but those pics are in the camera. Which is in a box. Somewhere in the house. It will maybe be next Sunday... Sorry!

MattG has a post up on the possibilities of various means of human interstellar travel without using magic wands. One of the things he mentioned was generation ships. I felt my usual quasi-libertarian objection about generation ships start to twinge. You know, the one about condemning your offspring to being born into a ship on a mission in the interstellar void. Then it hit me: Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born in Chicago, did they?

Lending further credence to the tales that the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao, was more or less completely off his nut with dementia towards his latter days comes this tale of his attempt at trade negotiations with Henry Kissinger:

Thursday, February 14, 2008

I'd be pissed off if they made me dress like John Belushi in a Killer Bees sketch and then gave me some fruity scooter-with-doors to drive, too, but I think I could refrain from venting my frustration by beating up children.

Nothing personal, but I hope you take a physical ass whuppin' for this, Officer Cupcake.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

RobertaX's house was in the Broad Ripple neighborhood, which reminded me a lot of my old haunts in the Virginia-Highlands area of Atlanta, except flat and with the streets all running at right angles to each other. The same gentrified old houses on quiet, tree-lined streets; the same mix of pubs, restaurants, boutiques, and galleries. On top of that, Christmas lights were up and the whole place was covered in a blanket of snow. It was almost hopelessly twee. I was smitten. Further, I hit it off amazingly well with my hostess. It was one of those experiences that happens only a few times in your life, where within five minutes of talking with someone you realize "Wow. I have a new best friend."

Driving back to Knoxville, the first exit I passed coming into the city was the one that led to Marko's house. Marko's old house, as he'd left for New Hampshire a week or two earlier. And Kaylee was gone to Alaska. And my old downstairs neighbor, "rennaissancemann", had gotten all married up and moved across town. And I didn't work at the Armory anymore... I suddenly realized that I had pretty much nothing left rooting me in K-town. So when RobertaX mentioned in a phone conversation that she was open to the possibility of a roommate, I was barely off the phone before I started pricing U-Hauls.

Saturday I'll be backing a 17-footer into the driveway of the place I've called home for the last six years, longer than anyplace that didn't have my parents' name on the mailbox, and Sunday I'll be setting out on my next great adventure. Knoxville's been fun; I showed up almost eight years ago without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, and proceeded to make this town my own, but it's time to head for new horizons. I'm excited, a little nervous, and buzzing with anticipation. (That last bit might just be because of the chocolate-covered espresso beans, though...)

How come Tom Cruise is a placenta-munching freak, but Will Smith gets a total pass even though he too believes in Cylons or Leptons or whatever the hell it is you can get out of your system by holding an electric soup can?

(Personally, I think it's because Will is, by all reports, a nice guy, and it's easy to tolerate an eccentric belief or two in a nice guy. Tom, however, is somewhat short on redeeming characteristics to make up for his belief in extraterrestrial Boeings.)

Inspired by that video I saw yesterday, I decided to take a stroll through the far left end of the internet. It had been a while since I had looked in on the opposition, so to speak, and I wondered if they were still as entertaining as they used to be despite pretty much having the Oval Office sewn up for '08.

Wow.

I was not disappointed. They are still selling ten different kinds of crazy out there. For instance, I was unaware that the evil patriarchy seems to have decided that even though Barack Hussein Obama has a furrin' sounding middle name and is obviously of a rich, dark hue, he at least pees standing up and is therefore preferable to Hils. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that Bill "Whitey" Clinton had directed the Democrat Machine to keep Obama down? I'm losing track. I do know this, though: The politics of victimhood are still hilarious.

It's blowing at a good 20-30mph, but (as it so rarely does) out of the SSW. My little crow's nest of a reading nook is on the northern side of the house, so I can sit in a bubble of relatively still air and watch the trees whip back and forth overhead... It's pretty neat.

See, housing costs money, and you need a house to keep your books in so that they don't get wet or blow around too much. If it weren't for books you wouldn't need a house and could just live under a bridge someplace, which is a lot cheaper and would therefore allow you to retire now.

In an homage to the spirit of books, I'll take up this meme from PhlegmmieviaRobertaX:

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?I avoid lots of probably perfectly good modern fiction because it bores me to tears. Like I've said elsewhere on this blog: "Look, if I want to read about failed relationships, career problems, family struggles, and substance abuse, I'll write a friggin' diary. The characters in the books I like to read have problems, too, but they usually solve them with laser beams or tactical nuclear warheads. I read these books because I wish I could solve my problems that way, too. This is called "escapism", and is why most folks seek entertainment in the first place." I just can't find interest in tales of finding a boyfriend or fixing a flat tire when there are books about rescuing a boyfriend from the Valley of the Trolls or fixing a busted stardrive out there to be read.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the eventbe?I've actually pondered this one before. I'd like an evening of dinner and drinks with two of my favorite fictional bad boys, Dr. Lecter and Lestat, as they were before their respective authors ruined them. (After Silence of the Lambs and Queen of the Damned, respectively, both these characters were put in, to use Dr. Lecter's brilliant phrase, "moral dignity pants".) The third character's a toughie, because I've always envisioned just the two. Let's occupy the open place setting with... Hmm... Perhaps Woodrow Wilson Smith? He ought to have quite a fund of good stories.

You are told you can't die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it's past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?While The Fountainhead is a strong contender for "Most Efficient Conversion of Wood Pulp to Sominex", I am forced here to admit that I have a beautiful hardbound copy of Don Quixote given me by a friend of my father's back in... oh... ninth grade? The bookmark has advanced all of perhaps seventy-five pages in the intervening twenty-five years. At an average clip of three pages per year, I'll be dust and bones long before I'm finished.

Come on, we've all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you've read, when in fact you've been nowhere near it?I'm pretty honest when it comes to what I've read and what I haven't. Tower of ego that I am, I'm not worried about people thinking less of me for not having read something.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to 'reread' it that you haven't? Which book?Y'know, this has never happened to me. The closest approach was when I re-read Anthem a couple of years ago for the first time since the eighth grade. It was not at all the story I remembered. Which was a pleasant surprise, actually, because I remembered it being positively awful and as dull as watching paint dry.

You've been appointed Book Advisor to a VIP (who's not a big reader). What's the first book you'd recommend and why? (if you feel like you'd have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP.If my VIP has not actually sat down and read 1984, he's about to.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?Latin. Definitely. I want to read Tacitus and Caesar and Cicero and Polybius and the rest in the original. It pains me, when reading older works in history (and especially military history), to come across a quotation in Latin or Greek that is left untranslated, because it reminds me how woefully uneducated I am.

A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?Hah! Don't throw me in that briar patch! The list of books I already re-read at least once a year is long enough that if it gets much longer, I won't have time to read new books. LOTR is the ceremonial one, though. I've made it a point to re-read it once a year since I was about twelve.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What's one bookish thing you 'discovered' from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?Were it not for my imaginary friends on teh intarw3bz, I never would have discovered Terry Pratchett and his wonder-full Discworld. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she's granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free. Y'know, I was going to do something elaborate here when I realized that I'm looking at a wall of boxes twenty-five feet long by four feet high by two feet deep. If I can find someplace to park them that has a sheltered porch with a comfortable chair, a place to set a beer, and a good friend or two who can enjoy an afternoon spent in the companionable silence of reading, I'm golden. "A good read, a bottle of Ruination, and thou. O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

Monday, February 11, 2008

Gunsmith Bob: "Have you ever been down partying on The Strip the whole time you've lived in Knoxville?"

Me: "Yeah, that's what I want to do; spend an evening surrounded by thousands of drunken, screaming college kids. We should go do that. Wait, I can think of something I'd rather do instead! Gouge out my own eyeballs with a broken beer bottle."

In Oakland, one of the scarier parts of the Californian S.S.R., anonymous criminals were assisted by police in the destruction of evidence, and paid to do it, too. The no-questions-asked "One Less Gun" evidence destruction program gave each person $250 per firearm. Judging by the looks of things, they lost money on nearly every one...

So there are some sixty boxes labeled "Books", two labeled "Brass", two labeled "Reloading", two labeled "AR-15/misc. rifle stuff", one labeled "Revolver holsters & spdldrs/moonclps", and one labeled "Curl. irns. & other hair crap"...

When President Pugsley of Venezuela engaged in a bit of thievery, he figured he'd get away with it. See, he was a president, representing a government, so what you and I call thievery, he calls "nationalization".

Unfortunately for Pugsley his victim didn't take it lying down, but went to the cops. Who promptly froze about twelve billion dollars of Pugsley's ill-gotten assets. (When you're picking victims for a mugging, avoid the world's largest publicly-traded oil company. They can afford good lawyers.)

Now Pugs is stomping his foot, threatening to hold his breath until he turns blue... and threatening to cut offhis own nose to spite his facethe export of oil to the U.S.A. (despite most of the legal fun taking place in the UK and the Netherlands. Nobody ever said dictators were sane.) No word yet if shadowy multinationals are threatening to cut off the export of coup agitators and assassins to Venezuela.

2) The Critical Bookworm discovers the geekier-than-thou world of... *shudder* fanfic, and properly recoils in horror. (If you ever see me reading fanfic, it's safe to just start shooting, as I've been replaced by an alien pod person.)

To look out the window, it's a beautiful day. Blue sky, sunny, low 50s. And yet days like today make me surlier than any other kind of weather. Cold you can dress up for. Heat can be mitigated by shade and a cool drink. Rain can be kept off by sitting under the roof overhang.

But there's absolutely no way to sit comfortably outside with a book and a smoke when the wind has been howling off the lake at a steady 20mph for three hours straight. You don't even worry about having your hair mussed when the occasional 40mph gust is snatching the hat from your head and playing hob with the patio furniture.

UPDATE: 4:10PM. Still blowing. It's the relentless, water-torture nature of it that gets to me.

UPDATE: 6:40PM. Still blowing. I may have mentioned that I live on the second floor of a drafty, converted cabin, surrounded by trees. So there's the steady c-clunk, c-clunk of the front door shifting back and forth in its jamb, the skritch-skritch of branches against the roof, and the keening wail (with low, oscillating undertones) of the wind in the eaves so loud that it sounds like someone running a shop vac in the next room. For. Seven. Hours. Straight.

By the opening years of the 20th Century, the battleship had become an increasingly baroque creature. In the fifty years since steel and steam replaced wood and canvas, designers of battleships had crammed them as chock full of guns of all different calibers as they could, mounted in a bewildering array of turrets, casemates, barbettes, and holes cut in the hull. Needless to say, this made something of a hash out of shooting, since every gun crew was more or less on their own; there was no point in even trying to coordinate the ranging efforts of two guns of two different calibers mounted at two different elevations on the ship. Meanwhile, the entire creaky edifice was powered through the ocean blue by an engine only marginally more sophisticated than the one used to push old Number 9 down the tracks.

On this date in 1906, every battleship then afloat became instantly obsolete when the British Royal Navy launched HMS Dreadnought. Powered by high-tech steam turbines, the Dreadnought had only one caliber of main armament. Her twelve-inch main guns, mounted in pairs in powered turrets, were directed by mast-mounted spotting stations that could observe the splashes caused by the fall of shot and transmit corrections to a central control station over the first electric fire direction system used in a capital ship.

Of course, every nation in the world immediately wanted one. Pretty soon, you were nobody if you didn't have a "dreadnought". Banana republics mortgaged the national wealth to have British shipyards make one just for them. They became too valuable to risk, such was the amount of money and national prestige tied up in them. Whole battlefleets would spend whole wars mouldering away in harbor, lest they actually be exposed to the risk of being sunk. In the forty years between their invention and their ultimate eclipse by the aircraft carrier and submarine, dreadnoughts squared off in high seas combat only a handful of times, and usually with fairly inconclusive results.

Don't you hate it when the cat has an attack of charge-around-the-house crazies at zero dark thirty and knocks something over, waking you up, so you decide to toddle off to the restroom while you're awake, and when you're headed back towards the bedroom you think "I wonder what's shakin' on teh intarw3bz?" and so you check and now you realize that the alarm clock is going off in twenty minutes, so there's not much point in going back to bed...

Saturday, February 09, 2008

2) My weekend morning routine for the past months has been doing paperwork in the office while the part-timer mans the register. Now that I'm leaving, she's training to assume my assistant-managerial role.

There's a camera on the wall above the register, complete with a microphone, so that the cashier can chatter at the person back in the office, but there's no way for the person in the office to reciprocate. For the last several months, every time I'd hear "Hey, wanna go outside for a smoke?", I was unable to say "Wait! Hang on! I'm in the middle of sorting the closing paperwork for yesterday!" Even worse would be when she started holding conversations with her "Imaginary Friend", knowing that I couldn't respond. It was as bad as when the dentist starts chatting you up when he's up to his elbows in your bicuspids... But now I could get my revenge. See, the camera's kind of over everyone else's head, but I'm tall, so if I got up on tippytoe while she was back there sweating over learning how to do the paperwork, she could hear...

"Hey! Wanna see my boogers?" And there, in 19 inches of glorious fisheye Trinitron color in the office, would be the nostril I had parked an inch in front of the camera lens. "EEEEWW! Stop that!" Vengeance is sweet.

"I used to write about politics all the time. That was back when I thought my “side” could win.” I still keep up with the issues, but I’ve come to the same realization that Jayman has - America does not want what I want out of government. America loves big government." -Kit on voting.

With Mitt Romney taking his ball and going home we're left with the Manchurian Candidate and what's left of Huckabee's campaign, plus Ron Paul, who is stubbornly clinging to Rosinante's saddle. McCain is desperately trying to convince everyone that he is really a conservative, and that while he may have kissed the Kerry campaign back in '04, he didn't actually slip it any tongue. The Huck is hoping that everyone is paying more attention to his support of the Fair Tax than they are to the fact that he'd use those fair taxes to send illegal aliens to school on the taxpayer's dime.

It's a sad day when I find myself muttering "Remember when the GOP had real candidates, like Bob Dole?"

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Reading foreign translations of your own webpage can be interesting at times. I'm pretty sure that "I'm just sayin'" does not directly parse to "Je suis juste sayin '."

It's so hard for software to handle idiom. As every geek knows, if the Redshirt says "Your mother wore army boots," the Klingon's translator spits out "Your maternal parent wore the footgear of a soldier," and he takes it as a compliment.

I read, with growing shock and horror, Dr. Helen's piece "Pinky-Swear You'll Vote for the Guy on YouTube!" In a day and age when actual grownups with rocket scientist IQs are displaying such muzzy-headed grasps of the issues, there are people who are trusting the exercise of their sacred franchise to mopey zit factories who can't tell Justin Timberlake from a real performing artist? No wonder the hadjis think they've got our number. This is the land of King Kid, after all; make American children unhappy enough and the nation will do anything to stop their little tantrum (e.g. '68-'72)

I think Florence King had the right idea:

If we want to regain the respect of the world, we should begin by announcing that children have no business expressing opinions on anything except "Do you have enough room in the toes?" -Florence King

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

What happens when the state turns someone out of prison, won't let them live anywhere near anyplace children might be, but doesn't want them living under a bridge, either?

Look, if they're such a danger to society, leave them in the pokey. If they're safe to be turned loose, leave them the hell alone. But please make up your mind, because now every time I drive over a bridge, I'm going to wonder if it has real-life trolls underneath.

This Google Analytics thing is the shizznit. It's got more graphs than a Congressional subcommittee hearing and more buttons than a waiter at TGI Friday's. I even know what some of them do.

According to this, you are probably an American (and living in Texas), using a cable connection and Internet Explorer, on a machine running WinXP with a screen resolution of 1024x768. You're most likely a white male between the ages of 35 and 45, make $40k-$80k/yr, and could stand to lose a few pounds, or so your doctor says. You're a Capricorn, and you forgot to take the trash out last night. Yes, that was the garbage truck that just went by. Too late.

How does Google know all this stuff? Beats me. I'd wonder more about why webcams and microphones have become such popular PC peripherals lately, though.

Putting a big chromed oval shroud on the exhaust tip of the Lincoln Landmass when you can see the actual rusty drinking straw of a tail pipe lurking only a half inch inside is dorky at best. At worst, it makes people think you may have issues.

Jackie Kaplan, who runs a consulting firm for social justice and community-based nonprofits, says her son David may not choose his activist duds, but he's aware of what they say. He has been marching in Washington, D.C., protests and canvassing neighborhoods for causes since he was 3. Kaplan, a lesbian, also dresses him in shirts supporting gay rights, one of which reads "Let My Parents Marry."

They should have farmed this study out to the Department of the Obvious, who could have done it much cheaper. If they wanted to run with the theme, they could have pointed out that home ownership is also out of reach of the incarcerated, minor children, and the deceased.

Isn't trying to get people who couldn't frickin' afford it into home ownership one of the reasons we wound up in our current pickle? Look, people, while owning your own home may be part of the American Dream, it's not part of the Bill of Rights, okay?

J.R. Shirley's brother and sister-in-law try to do the right thing by the INS and are treated to a dazzling display of raw bureaucratic ineptitude. Your government inaction.

Lawdog has teh funnies on the new obstacle course that the City of Berkeley (yes, the same Berkeley referred to on my "Nuke Berkeley" tee shirt) has installed out front of their local USMC recruiting office. Complete with a patchouli-scented hippie version of Whack-A-Mole.

The International Hour here at VFTP is always neat to look at, but some are even neater than others. Oakleigh, Australia, keep it real! Baku, Azerbaijan, represent! A shout out to my peeps in Zadar, Croatia!

(Oh, and you know you've arrived when you're cited as a source on the Greek Wikipedia.)

So, I poked my head out from under the covers to find that some nut in gun-free Chicago has herded patrons and clerks at a Lane Bryant into the back room and mowed them down, I guess with a sharp stick or something; Indians trading in their mopeds for little econoboxes mean that $3/gal gas will soon be a wistful memory; and my next President is still going to be one of three Democrats or the Manchurian Candidate. This means there will be six more weeks of winter. Unlike Punxsutawney Phil, however, I can't retreat into my burrow, for the donuts beckon.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Both cats were dozing immobilized in a puddle of sunshine on the floor. I stealthily crept up with the hairbrush...

I'm now sitting smugly at my desk with two sleepily blinking, freshly de-undercoated cats staring at me like... well... let's just say that if looks could maim, I'd be typing this from a wicker basket.

...and clear-eyed, firm-jawed resolution, I take my fate in my hands and set off to make the best donuts I can make. I do it totally un-self-consciously, for it is the only way I know how to be. In fact, I hold a slight, sneering internal contempt for the substandard donut maker across the street who demands that his donuts be recognized as equal with mine by the faceless bureaucrats of the donut commission. Looters!

Because there's nothing more slapstick than a good story containing rednecks, beer, modular housing, tow trucks, and self-inflicted gunshot wounds... (If the tow truck had been dragging the protagonist's ex-girlfriend's primered '78 Camaro the whole time, the story would actually be the Platonic Ideal of Country-Western song material.)

On this date in 1918, Russia finally switched to the Gregorian calendar. Up to then, they had been using the quaint Julian one, guaranteeing that future students would be forever perplexed as to why a dustup that began in November was called "The October Revolution".